A few words from a professional procrastinator

Uncharted was one of the first PS3 games released and was considered to be one of the highlights of the PS3.

We went through the jungle in search of Drake’s Fortune. Then almost fell out of a train car hanging over a cliff in Uncharted 2: Honor Among Thieves. Now it looks like we are going to survive a plane crash.

The Uncharted series is the action movie on the PS3. It uses the formula for action movies. The gruffy, charming and witty lead character of Nathan Drake, the side kick Sully, and all the guns, explosion and action you can fit into a blue-ray disc.

Uncharted 2 brought us to the Himalayas in search of the Fountain of Life.

I’ll believe it when I see it. Back in January, Polyphony announced the delay of Gran Turismo to a later date. This was shortly after a 3D version hit the demo booths at CES. I blogged about the delay stating that 3D gaming must be the cause of the change of releas date. Apparently that is partially true.

I can’t believe they actually pushed the release date of a major franchise by nine months just to put 3D into it even though 98% of the people buying the game will not have necessary hardware to play it in 3D. Aside from 3D, they also added the famous BBC Top Gear test track among other things.

Sony will also be releasing a Collector’s Edition of the game which comes with a 300 page car guide, die-cast model of the 2009 Nissan GT-R, Gran Turismo key chain, voucher of in-game upgrades, certificate of authenticity and special collector’s packaging.

Will the delay be worth it? I think so. Will they earn the $60 Million they spent on developing the game? Over time probably. Have I preordered? Yes. Do I believe it will come out in November? I’ll believe it when I see it.

After almost a lifetime of waiting (five years in gaming is practically a console cycle) Final Fantasy 13 will finally be released in Japan TODAY. The famed Famitsu gaming magazine has given the game an imperfect score of 39/40.

The only Final Fantasy game to receive the honor is FF12. Fan favorite Final Fantasy 7 earned 38, while the PS2 FF 10 earned a similar 39/40.

Only four games have been awarded this year the coveted “perfect score”. Those include Bayonetta, Super Mario Brothers, Dragon Quest 9 and Monster Rancher 3.

Many gamers are fickle folk who will read heavily into reviews before making a purchase, while others will buy the game regardless if it was good or not based on reviews just as long as it had the franchise name on it (Final Fantasy, Guitar Hero and so on…). So does one point matter?

I think the game will still be hit. Despite many advances in RPGs by Bioware with Mass Effect and Dragon Age as well as Fallout and Oblivion with Bethesda, there are still a lot gamers who still like the linear gameplay and beautiful cutscenes. I for one will still buy the game. Square-Enix has shipped 2 million copies of the game for the launch.

So the game did not get the perfect score from Famitsu. It will still sell millions, just one point shy of the perfect score merely tells gamers that, it’s good ,but not perfect for us, but still good.

But for gamers such as myself, April is still too far away for me. I’ll try not care until then. But here’s a thought, was the international release date pushed to spring just so they can release the Xbox version at the same time? I hope not. Because if they did, I would rather be playing it anyway on the PS3 than to wait for the Xbox version to catch up.

Players are now waiting in the lobby of the movie theater in Playstation Home eagerly awaiting for the Final Fantasy 13 trailer which is due in less than an hour. Will it finally announce a release date for the rest of the world? Why would Square-Enix go through all the trouble in creating a countdown to November 13 (which is Friday the 13th FYI) just for a trailer.

And no, the game will not be released tomorrow. But instead, Sony will fill the ten screens of Playstation Home with a new trailer! Yes, a trailer. But we are all hoping for something bigger than that. It could be the North American (English) release date which would be sweet. Then only for my happiness to be deflated by the sight of a Spring 2010 release date. Like sometime in May ; ;.

Barnes and Noble today launched their ebook competitor to Sony and Amazon called the “Nook”. And I’m impressed. The photo from Gizmodo in my rumor blog about it last week was the real thing.
Priced at $259, the same as the international edition of the Kindle 2 and the big things about it is the WiFi, color touchscreen and mini SD card support is great. They even provided a good comparison chart on how it stands against the Kindle.

It’s important to note that the Nook first creates an environment to enhance the book buying, bookstore and reading experience rather than trying to replace the dead tree books that we usually buy. You read through entire books while inside the actual Barnes and Noble bookstore which is something that you might do in real life. You can share your books with friends digitally which is something that you would do in real life.

The touch screen is a good addition but colored? I know we like to look at our book covers in color but is it really necessary? I would have preferred that the screen is colored. Particularly with books that have colored pictures to be digitally viewable in colored as well in the Nook.

For overseas users who want an ebook reader when we travel or when we live in other places outside the United States are out of luck. The Nook is just for the U.S. (for now I hope). You cannot purchase books via WiFi outside the US. The Nook uses AT&T’s 3G network so there may be hope for the rest of us living outside the US much like the Kindle.

The Nook only has 10 days of battery life compared to the Kindle’s 14. If Apple is indeed at work on a similar device it should either provide a strong argument why the battery doesn’t last for days or the technology behind it allows it to last for days.

The Nook supports various formats that you can put in a 16GB mini SD card including mp3s. It does not support text to audio like the Kindle which got Amazon into some trouble when it was released.

The Nook supports pdf, jpg, gif, png bmp, mpdf, ePub and PDB file formats. You do not have to email these documents for the provider to send it back to you for a nominal fee to be able to read it on the Nook. These can all be done by the user. Yay!

This might not be the perfect eReader out there. But it is a good first step in the right direction. Now I wish all the ebooks are published in a common format that will allow me to buy books from any digital storefront and get the book I want at the lowest price available. That would be something. Especially when we are given the opportunity to write our own books and publish it ourselves. Now that would be totally amazing.

The logo just looks a bit off for me. It looks more like a horseshoe at first glance. Very tempting to buy, but I’ll hold off until I see that device from Cupertino.

Amazon has a reader. Sony has a reader and soon Barnes and Noble will have their own. The B&N device seems to overcome the shortcomings of the other two such as the inability to read under bright light and the difficulties of extended reading on a screen even though it’s been designed to look like paper.

This device seems like it will put up a good fight with the other two. Add to the fact that B&N has retail stores out there far more than Sony Style stores to sell these readers to the masses.

Now if only everyone could agree on a common format so we can buy books from anywhere we want or even support any files we put into it, then that would be an eBook dream. It’s still quite far away for me to think of giving up my dead tree books. But with all the competition heating up someone is bound to listen to the masses and finally bring out the reader that we all could live with.